Monday, February 25, 2008

Photography

A lot of designers post photography tips, and I guess I'll have to join that group because I just have to share my success story! I have this new ring design that has been a pain in the you-know-what to photograph! It has a lot of reflective qualities, which give it tremendous beauty in person. However, when photographed, it of course picks up the shadows in the background. Here is the first series I took of it:

Besides being on the dark side, in the first photo you can see a pink shadow in what should be clear glass. It doesn't look horrible, but it doesn't do the piece justice. Same with the second photo. The glass is shadowed by the reflected background.

The solution I found was this: I placed it closer to the light source (my south-facing front door) and draped a sheer white curtain over my head and the piece to cut out some of the glare. Next, I held a 9x12 inch piece of white paper in front of the ring so that only the white of the paper reflected. Here's the result:

Much better, huh? I'm so happy with the adjustment! It now shows how beautiful this ring really is! By the way, all of the photos were taken using a Canon Powershot S3IS set on super macro. It is a great camera (my folks are probably going to want this one back one of these days :)